1. Field of the Invention
The invention presented herein is about a switching implement suitable for the remote-controlled switching of electrical components.
2. Related Art
The invention presented herein is about a switching implement suitable for the remote-controlled switching of electrical consumers. Standard vehicle configurations feature one or two fuse and relay boxes for frequently switching or small to medium loads. Many of these fuse and relay boxes are so-called smart junction boxes with an extra circuitry and sometimes included semiconductor switches.
A switching implement of this kind is described in EP 0 181 534 131 and other publications. This type of switching implement with its many relays and blow-out fuses for protection requires a fairly elaborate design and is of limited reliability due to its many fuses, relays and plug connections. It also leads to comparatively much power being lost during operation because every fuse, every relay coil, every relay contact, and every contact dissipates some of the power. Since the plug-in fuses need to be replaced every time a situation occurs that their job is to protect the vehicle against (e.g. overload or short circuit), the entire switching implement needs to be installed at a place in the vehicle where it can be accessed for maintenance.
The state of the art has revealed maintenance-free switching implements using semiconductor switches for actuating the electrical consumers, However, the highcurrent switching transistors deployed in these switching implements are very expensive. Thermal bimetal switching devices failed to become the standard means of overload and short-circuit protection because their design-specific disadvantages disallow their general use in motor vehicles.
EP 1 033 288 A1 describes a fusing system featuring a motor-driven actuator which can be remote controlled to reversibly break the contact of multiples lines. However, this fusing system allows but a single set sequence of on or off switching actions regarding the consumer lines. The fusing system with its single actuator fails to independently switch the different consumers on or off. Another fact is that having a motor break the contacts slows down the process of breaking the contacts whose long arc durations as specifically generated by short circuit currents will wear down the contacts faster, thereby shortening the life of the contacts.
Hence, the task of the current invention is to provide a switching implement for the remote-controlled switching of electrical components or groups of components, where the continuous power loss of the implement rates significantly lower than that of conventional fuse and relay boxes, where the design of the implement is of a small footprint, robust and cost-effective, and where the means of protection against overload and short circuit can be re-actuated which allows the switching implement to be installed in less accessible places in the vehicle.